Isaac Asimov
2024
Author · Professor · Humanist
After Isaac Asimov’s family emigrated from Petrovichi, Russia to the United States in 1923, he taught himself to read. Newsstands provided reading material, including science fiction, which fascinated him. He haunted the Brooklyn public library and, by age 12, he was writing stories for his friends. It was “like reading a book I hadn’t written,” he recalled.
“What would happen to the characters? … In my wildest dreams it never occurred to me that anything I wrote would ever be published.”
His Orthodox Jewish parents did not force religion on young Isaac. At age 15 he studied Zoology at Columbia University in Brooklyn, switching to Chemistry when he objected to dissecting an alley cat. He completed his Master of Arts degree in Chemistry in 1941 and earned a PhD in Chemistry in 1948.
He came to call himself an atheist, then a humanist. He opposed the Vietnam war in the 1960s, embraced environmentalism, and supported the Democratic party and feminism – but he eschewed exclusionary societies, leaving Mensa after he found its members arrogant.
He sent his first story to Astounding Science Fiction at age 18. It was rejected, but that encouraged him to keep writing. His first story was printed in 1939. Soon, Asimov became famous for stories like “Nightfall,” the “I Robot” stories, and the Foundation novels.
Oddly, the author who described spaceflight in his novels had crippling acrophobia. This fear of flying greatly limited his travel, but he continued to impress the public with his highly entertaining speeches, humor, and approachability.
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”
“I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.”
The modern polymath wrote about Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, the Bible, American history, world history, mystery, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, and other sciences. Asimov had books in every Dewey Decimal category except category 100 (philosophy and psychology). In 1971, he even wrote some pseudo-pornography with The Sensuous Dirty Old Man.
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
He was awarded Hugo Awards, Nebula awards, Locus awards, an SFWA Grandmaster, and many others. He also signed the Humanist Manifesto and helped found the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP).
Through his leadership and life, Asimov was a prominent advocate for humanism. He helped popularize secular humanism and made humanist ideals more accessible to the public through his extensive body of work. As a result, he was recognized by the American Humanist Association as the Humanist of the Year in 1984, and he served as their president from 1985 until his death in 1992.
“We owe it to ourselves as respectable human beings, as thinking human beings, to do what we can to make humanity rational. And having done this—or having tried to do this—we can respect ourselves.”